VLOOKUP() function only returns values from the columns to the left of the key field. You can’t build the formula and give it a column index number of –1, for instance. This is will result on a #VALUE error, like on the following example:

On this example, we want to retrieve the value on the Date column that matches with the ID on cell B14 so we putted a –1 column index number on the function that didn’t worked. A simple way of going around this problem is to build our own VLOOKUPNEG (as from negative) function that works with negative column index numbers and can return values to the left of the key field, in this case, the Date value that is on the left of the ID column. So, this is the UDF (User Defined Function) that you can create:

Excel 2010 has a feature for Share Workbook, under the Review tab, on the Changes group but Excel wasn’t designed for having multiple people accessing the same workbook at the same time so, when you share a workbook, it becomes very limited on the things that you can do with it.

For instance, on shared workbooks you can’t have tables. You can’t delete sheets. You cannot merge cells, add conditional formatting to cells, add Data Validation’s, add charts, add pictures, add pivot tables, etc. You will end up with a very basic worksheet to work with.

On top of all of this, shared workbooks tend to became corrupted! It’s only a matter of time. So, my advice is to stay away from shared workbooks. If you want to have multiple people inputting information on the same file, you can create a workbook for each of them and then have a “master” workbook where you link to all of those individual files and compile the information on that “master”.